Monday, 28 July 2014

Hip Bee Blocks

After returning from our travels in Spain and Portugal I had to play catch up with the HipBee blocks. Thankfully all the bees were very patient in waiting for them. I thought I should stitch them in order, but Rachel, Mamafairy had asked for flower blocks in 3 sizes and I'd just borrowed a quilt book from Quilt Club with this Rose of Sharon block....so that was first.

The colours Rachel sent me were suitable for a daffodil, so I found a pattern online, although it was for a 6" square block, so I added longer leaves and a bias stem, once I'd found my Clover bias maker.

I was also looking through Carina's new book Stitched Blooms and I thought that this embroidery pattern would translate beautifully into an appliqué. The book is great as it comes with a CD and so you can print off the design any size you like, 6" square. All of them were top stitched with Aurifil 40 wt, yummy.

I found these ones for Jill, The Nocturnal Stitcher, the hardest as I'd already seen some brilliant designs in the Flickr group, but with limited fabric, I also didn't want to mess up. I found a lovely tutorial on YouTube of how to piece improv curves and took it from there. Unfortunately my second block didn't have enough fabric to make 12" and so I added the best beach fabric I had. I think they look quite cute and will make a lovely picnic blanket.

These two paperpieced blocks were for Second Chance Tan for her mums quilt. I enjoyed piecing these, although it's difficult to judge how much fabric is required as paper piecing can be quite wasteful.

Yippee...all caught up and July is my month. I chose to make these scrappy mini stars using Cindy's tutorial on the Fluffy Sheep Blog. I bought 2 Lark Jelly Rolls...but unfortunately they are nothing like Moda ones. Some of the strips are barely 2.25". So I'm expecting to have to put lots of iron on interfacing on the back to stop little holes appearing :o(

We have one month left in the Bee and then unfortunately due to busy lives we are all buzzing off in different directions to do different things. It's been loads of fun though and thanks to Di of Willowbeck Designs for being a great Bee Mama and organising us so well.